


Sentiments

by laireshi



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Commander Rogers, Getting Together, Honey Trap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 21:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18018983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: “Commander,” Maria Hill says. “Your personal emotions cloud your judgement here. Stark’s the best man for the job. I wouldn’t have asked him otherwise.”“My judgement isn’t clouded!” Steve breathes heavily.





	Sentiments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faite/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Erica <3 You're wonderful!

“He’s not a SHIELD agent,” Steve snaps. “That’s the end of it.”

Maria Hill is looking at him unimpressed. “He _is_ an Avenger, sir, and I am in charge of the team.”

Steve locks eyes with her. “This is not the Avengers business.”

“Yet,” she says calmly. “Let’s just wait for Reusch to supply Hydra, shall we? I’m sure the Avengers will be happy to fight better-armed Hydra agents than solve it now.”

“Not. The. Point.” Steve grits out. “You can’t send an unarmed, untrained man—”

“Stark is neither of those things,” Maria Hill notes.

“And I _am_ invited anyway,” Tony says, walking in. 

Steve glares at him. “This is a private conversation.”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “In a room with the door left wide open, in the Avengers Tower. Sure.” He glances at Maria then. “What’s the problem, anyway? I thought we agreed on all the details.”

“We have,” she confirms. 

“ _We_ have not.” Steve is ready to yell.

“You put me on this team, Steve, I thought that meant—well, obviously you don’t trust me like before, but—” Tony trails off. “Well, stopping illegal arms dealers is the one thing you can believe I’ll do gladly.”

Steve sees an opportunity to stop this madness. _Or you’ll just help him instead_ , he could say, _Not a big difference from the people you got in bed with during the war_. That would keep Tony here, safe and sound.

He might as well punch him in the face and knock him out, though. Even annoyed and worried as Steve is right now, he can’t say that to Tony. He just can’t. Tony’s infuriating and their friendship isn’t anywhere near what it used to be yet—if it’ll ever be like that again—but there are lines Steve won’t cross.

“You’re an Avenger,” Steve says finally. “Thanos attacks New York? That’s your field of expertise. Distracting arms dealers is not.”

Tony blinks slowly a few times. “Steve, Commander Rogers—you do realise _who_ I am, right?”

Steve closes his hands into fists. He’s got a suspicion Maria Hill is laughing at him, even if her face is composed. 

Don’t they both see this is crazy and dangerous? 

“You’re not going,” Steve says. “That’s an order.”

Tony flashes him a brilliant smile. “But I’m not an agent of SHIELD, Commander.”

“Stark’s ready, sir,” Maria Hill says. “We’ve gone over all the details.”

Tony—any Avenger—isn’t a fucking honeypot. 

So he’s a genius-smart and movie-star-handsome and he’s got too much experience altogether with arms dealers, so what, SHIELD has hundreds of agents.

“Commander,” Maria Hill says. “Your personal emotions cloud your judgement here. Stark’s the best man for the job. I wouldn’t have asked him otherwise.”

“My judgement isn’t clouded!” Steve breathes heavily.

He’s the only one thinking clearly here, actually, but he knows it’s for nothing: he knows the stubborn set to Tony’s shoulders, and if the man actually is invited for his own merits and not by SHIELD machinations, there’s nothing that’ll stop him going now.

Steve will just have to find a way to keep him safe anyway.

***

Steve’s breath catches when Tony walks into the room, wearing a form-fitting three-pieces suit, his tie the exact shade of blue his eyes are. He’s smiling, easy and open, as he shakes hands with the other present businessmen involved in rather more shady affairs than Steve likes. This is a _very_ private party; securing an invitation of his own was rather more difficult than he’d anticipated. He’s actually surprised Tony was on the list of guests: he’s got a very high profile. Everyone knows his company doesn’t produce weapons anymore and that Tony himself is a superhero, not a villain.

Or everyone _should_ know, Steve corrects himself; Tony’s certainly convinced a lot of their fellow heroes he was more of a villain himself.

He pushes the thoughts away as Tony shakes his hand, too, and hold it just a moment too long. His expression doesn’t change, but Steve knows Tony must’ve seen through his image inducers. He _has_ designed them, after all. 

“I’m Tony—”

“Everyone knows you, Mister Stark,” Steve says, letting his eyes wander up and down Tony’s body. He’s playing a role here. “My name is Adam Enders.”

Tony leaves him with another pleasant formality, and moves across the room; the way he greets people and keeps getting closer to the host is almost like a dance.

Steve knows the parameters of his mission and he doesn’t like them.

He’s here to keep an eye on Tony, but Tony’s supposed to get Reusch to lead him into his private rooms, distracted enough not to notice Tony placing a few recording devices.

A promise of Stark tech won’t be enough to achieve this.

Steve can’t just keep staring at him. He makes himself talk to other assembled men and women, staying far away from Reusch, an easy to notice, tall, blond man as Tony finally approaches him.

Steve’s engaged in a conversation with a woman that he’s almost sure is one of the AIM engineers, but in the corner of his eye he sees Tony leans in a bit too close, his eyes half-lidded. 

Reusch wraps his hand around Tony’s wrist. It’s not subtle.

Tony doesn’t push him away.

“Stark going back into the weapons business would be good,” Steve’s interlocutor says, following his line of sight. “Surprising, though.”

“Didn’t his company just tank?” Steve says indifferently. “He’s starting over. He needs money.”

And he very publicly rejected military funding, but Steve won’t be mentioning that in his current company.

Tony and Reusch disappear behind a pair of doors.

Steve is going to have words with Maria Hill.

It’s maybe fifteen minutes later, a personal eternity in Steve’s opinion, when there’s an explosion in the distance. Cursing his cover dictating a lack of SHIELD communicator on him, he runs to a window, but he can’t see anything from here. 

Tony walks back into the room. Before his armour covers his body, Steve notices that his tie is undone.

“That would be Avengers business, I’m afraid,” he says as Iron Man. “I am sorry to leave such an interesting company, and I hope we’ll meet again soon. Perhaps I’ll throw a party myself.”

He opens the window next to Steve instead of crashing through it, and then he’s out.

“ _Really_ not sure about inviting an Avenger here,” a stocky man says.

Reusch rejoins the party too, looking composed. “I’m not holding you here, if you deem my list of guests unacceptable,” he notes. “Someone with connections like Tony Stark can be very useful.”

 _Connections_ , Steve thinks. That’s certainly why he disappeared with Tony. And are any of them really dumb enough to believe Tony would sell them weapons or is it just blind hope?

He can’t wait to get his hands on Reusch and put him in the Raft, a baseline human or not.

***

Back on the helicarrier, Steve learns the explosion was in fact a giant lizard-like creature coming out of a portal in Central Park. Stephen Strange took care of it.

Steve was just glad of the timing.

“Stark’s done the job,” Maria Hill informs him. “We’ve got full surveillance on Reusch now.”

Steve stares at her. “And that’s worth making him seduce the guy?”

“He’s done the job,” Maria Hill repeats. “And he’s a grown man who would’ve extricated himself from the situation even without the Avengers alert.” She raises an eyebrow. “Though Reusch is his type. Sir.” She salutes and leaves before Steve can ask what the _hell_ is that supposed to mean.

Tony slides into his office moments later. He’s out of his armour now, still in the suit he’d been wearing except for the tie, completely discarded by now.

“So,” he says, and then stands there, rocking on his feet.

“Hill said the mission was a success,” Steve says.

“She didn’t say anything like _what the hell have you been doing there, Steve?_ ”

Steve takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t help calm him down. “Forgive me for trying to make sure you’re _safe—_ ”

“I don’t need your _coddling_ , I can damn well deal with one man—”

“You shouldn’t have to!”

They stare at each other and Steve wishes fervently that he could understand why and how Tony can always make him so _angry_.

“I wasn’t going to let him go very far,” Tony says quietly. “But also, it’s really none of your business.”

He’s right. It’s not Steve’s business. And there’s his answer, too; the reason Tony manages to push all his buttons without even trying.

Steve should go—no, wait, it’s his office, _Tony_ should go, Steve should kick him out and—and—

Tony’s eyes are really incredibly blue; so bright even in the artificial light that makes everyone else look like zombies. 

Steve surges forward and kisses him.

Tony gasps into his mouth, and Steve starts to back off, horrified at himself, when Tony grabs him by his uniform straps and pulls him in again.

“Is _that_ why you were so opposed to this mission?” Tony breaks the kiss to ask.

Steve scowls at him. “I was worried about a teammate,” he corrects, and Tony’s eyes are laughing at him, but Steve doesn’t even mind: they’re so close he can feel Tony’s heart beating wildly in his chest, Tony’s breath coming fast, and he wraps his arms around Tony and kisses him again.

Tony’s _his_ , and now they both know that.


End file.
